Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1916, by The Mentor Association, Inc.
The visitor to the Netherland art galleries should leave his notions of Greek and Italian art with his umbrella, at the entrance. Holland is no place to talk about canons of proportion or types of beauty or ideals of any kind. The Dutch are now, as they have always been, a people confronted by the realities of existence, and see life, literature, and art as facts rather than as fancies. There has never been much romance about them, but, on the contrary, a realization of the existent, a grasp of the truth and vitality of things, a keen penetration into the human problem. There never was any need for far-fetched fancies or ideals. The life about them interested and impressed them, and, from the very beginning, the Dutch painters were painting the portrait of their own land and people. The result was an art that has a distinct quality of its own—just as distinct a quality as the art of Persia or Japan. You would not think of judging Japanese art by that of Italy. Why then think of Dutch art in any other terms than its own?
Rembrandt and Raphael
PORTRAIT OF A MAN
Altman Collection of Metropolitan Museum, New York
To carry out the thought in illustration, it may be said that Rembrandt, the great Dutchman, was the very opposite of Raphael, the great Italian. He painted no allegories on Vatican walls, was not led away by Renaissance revivals of Greek form, dreamed no dreams of uniting pagan types with Christian ideals. Even technically he was widely different from Raphael. He painted the easel picture in oils, had no love whatever for Italian line and composition, did all his drawing and modeling by catches of shadow, and produced his most startling effects by the dramatic use of light and color. In all this Rembrandt was merely reflecting his time and his people in his own ingenious way. He was emphatically true to the Dutch point of view, and today his art is full of truth, force, vitality, character. In fact, that word “character” is the keynote to all his work. It furthermore explains that æsthetic paradox, sometimes applied to Rembrandt, “the beauty of the ugly.” For many of his people are ugly, if we regard them for the straightness of their foreheads and noses, the oval of their chins, or the proportions of their figures; but they are beautiful in their simplicity of presence, their unconscious sincerity, their profound truth of character.
THE ARCHITECT